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July 30, 2008

Luckily when I baked this month's challenge I still had a functional camera. However not annymore when I wanted to bake the Double DB, so this going to follow somewhen, soon. I loved the buttercream with the crunchy hazelnut parline paste. Oh and I was very happy to use my home made apricot jam in the cake. I remember as a child I always hated the idea of putting jam into a dessert, such as the Hungarian Zserbó, that my mom always baked, meanwhile I prepare it myself for Christmas and the jam may not be missing.

The most painful part of this challenge: peeling the nuts! Boah that was a task! It took me hours to get them naked.

Thanks for this great challenge to Chris from Mele Cotte.Check out the fellow Daring Bakers here.

July 24, 2008

It is time again for the Original Recipe Event launched by Lore from Culinarty. Since days I knew exactly what I am going to prepare, however I was not sure at all if it is going to be tasty.

I had all ingredients at home: a piece of celery left from the soup I cooked yesterday, one pear from the saffron pears I prepared lately, a half pack of grated almonds, half cup of yoghurt, a piece of smoked cheese. However using only these ingredients it would have been totally bland. That is why I thought to bring some colour to it in a form of a beetroot. My experiment turned to be a light and tasty lunch!

Knead a dough out of flour, dry yeast, butter, lukewarm milk, salt and sugar. Set aside for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 200°C. Slice celery, pear and beetroot with a help of a mandoline. Sprinkle lemon juice over the pear. Butter a tart form and put rolled out dough into it. Place sliced veggies and fruit in it and add mixed yoghurt with egg, almond and spices. Add grated smoked cheese on top and bake for 25-30 minutes.

July 22, 2008

Zorra from Kochtopf lives in Spain and she is sometimes homesick of Switzerland. For this reason she organised a blog event: Red, white or Swiss, also because soon it is the Swiss National Day on the 1st of August. It is summer, however I decided to cook a soup for this event, that is more a winter dish. I am talking about the Bündner Gerstensuppe with Bündnerfleisch that is a barley soup with dried beef. Bündnerfleisch or Viande des Grisons, is an air dried meat that is produced in the Grisons canton of Switzerland and that is the place where this soup comes from.

Ingredients:100 g barley1 onion1/2 celery2 carrots2 potatoes1 leek2 tablespoon oil1,5 liter chicken stocksalt, pepperSoak the barley over night. Chop onion, celery, carrots and potatoes. Slice leek.Sauté chopped veggies with olive oil until lightly soften (at this part you can add smoked ham or bacon, but I left this out because it is summer). Add barley and pour chicken stock and bring to boil, cook it for 2 hours on medium heat. Season with salt and pepper. To bind to soup you can mix 100 ml heavy cream with two egg yolks and add it, but do not cook anymore!

July 21, 2008

I am so fond of chicken satay, that it became almost today's lunch, however I noticed that some ingredints are missing so I decided to cook something else. At least I have saved some calories for the dessert: leftover cream puffs with mousse au chocolat...mmm...So this dish I want to share is very refreshing and easy to preapre. I simply served it with some rice. The sauce has an intense taste, and if you are a lemon lover, it is worth a try.

Heat olive oil and fry chicken on both sides and set aside. Grind coriander, mustard seeds together with the rest of the spices and chili. Add chopped onion, spices and mix well. Add chicken, juice of 1 lemon, chicken stock and 1 sliced lemon. Cook for 20-25 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat oil, add paprika powder, sliced carrot, pea and stock so that the veggies are almost covered. Add a whole paprika and parsley, binded together. Cook until veggies are ready, after add more stock, as much as you want to have. Prepare spaetzle (well kind of): mix eggs with flour and oil. Add so much water so that you get a thick, but not too much, mixture. When soup is boiling add with a help of a spaetzle maker it to the soup. Season with black pepper.

July 20, 2008

No sunday should pass without a dessert. Agree? I wanted to bake bluberry tarts again, however I changed my mind and baked some cream puffs. The filling was kind of an experiment, nothing special, but it was very tasty and had an intense colour. However I was not happy with its consistence so I decided to make another type simply using some home made morello cherry jam and heavy cream. Mmm I suppose still have to work on the shape of the puffs...

Oh! and I received one more award, the “The Arte y Pico” award which translates to “Peak of Art”. Thank you so much Shari!

For the cream puffs cook water with butter and salt. Add flour and mix with a help of a wooden spoon until the bottom of the pot gets white. In a bowl add eggs and mix with a help of a mixer. With the help of an icing bag make small smudges on a baking paper. Bake for 20 minutes on 200 °CFor the filling set blueberries with vanilla sugar and red wine to cook. Let it reduce, sieve and let it cool. Beat heavy cream and add the blueberry sauce.

Besides beeing an onion freak, I have to admit that I am also a huge tomato fan. It is fascinating how many different shapes, tastes and colour tomatoes have. Lately I bought a small basket full of beautiful, colourful ones. It even had one with kind of a dark rosa-red colour, mmm that was the best tasting tomato I have ever had. Some had kind of a truffle touch, others sweet like honey.

The tomato probably originated in the highlands of the west coast of South America. There is no evidence the tomato was cultivated or even eaten in Peru before the Spanish arrived. There is a competing hypothesis that says the plant, like the word "tomato", originated in Mexico, where one of the two apparently oldest "wild" types grows. It is entirely possible that domestication arose in both regions independently.In any case, by some means the tomato migrated to Central America. Mayans and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking, and it was being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by the 16th Century. It is thought that the Pueblo people believed those who witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of divination. The large, lumpy tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated and was encouraged in Central America. source:wiki

And now, instead of sharing more blabla about that, enjoy my photos of tomatoes that I have been collecting for monthes to share.

July 18, 2008

"What should I serve for dinner? Oh there is a beautiful radicchio in the fridge, great! So what shall I do with it?!" These thoughts were running on my mind, when all of a sudden I had the idea to prepare a risotto. I wanted to try it since long with red wine, so I grabbed a pot and started to peel an onion...Ingredients:1 onion2 celery stalks250 g risotto rice500 ml red wine300 ml vegetable stock1 radicchiograted parmesanolive oilsalt, pepper

Grate onion and celery stalks. Heat olive oil, add onion, celery and sauté. Add rice and mix until rice is well covered with oil. In a separate large saucepan bring the stock and the wine to simmer, and keep it hot. Add some wine, increase heat to medium, and stir constantly. When the wine has been absorbed, add a little of the hot wine-stock. Add salt and pepper.Once it is absorbed, add a little more; repeat this process, stirring constantly, until the rice is cooked through. After third portion of wine-stock add chopped radicchio.To the cooked rice add grated parmesan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until parmesan melt. Season with salt.

July 17, 2008

I love sweet corn since my childhood. Until today, if you ask me what is the best way to eat it, I am going to give the answer: cooked, sprinkled with some salt. If one has the chance to grill the corn, mmm that is even better! I am not a fan of corn with flavoured butter. I prefer it as it is.

However it is a pity that here you only get them without their leaves in the stores. It just does not have the same taste like cooked for 2-3 hours with some leaves on the bottom and top of the pot. In this post I wanted to share some photos I took of a nearby corn field from the moment it started to grow.

Here is my collection of maize, that I usually use to decorate the house in autumn.

July 15, 2008

Could you imagine anything better on a cold and rainy summer day than some ice cream? Yeah a cup of hot chocolate, but hey it is summer! So I decided to prepare red currant ice cream, to bring back the feeling of a warm day.

July 13, 2008

I cooked a big bunch of spaghetti yesterday and had some leftover that I did not want to throw away. That brought me to the idea to prepare pasta nests in the oven, using muffin forms. A delicious and simple pasta dish. I had no plan, so I decided to learn it by doing.

July 10, 2008

Raspberries, beautiful raspberries were waiting for me in front of my door. My neighbour brought them right from her garden. Mmm they smelled wonderful.

This gave me the last kick to "recycle" the rest of the pastry I had left from the blueberry tart. I had a box of Hungarian quark that should have been used this week, so I decided to prepare some cute quark tarts with raspberries. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I have something more: the lovely Farida simply made my day! She awarded me with the "You make my day award".

July 8, 2008

Here I go with last month's Double DB Challenge: Chocolate Intensity from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book. Flourless chocolate cake with coffee. It is a moist and intense cake, one slice and only your eyes can eat more. It is an easy and really delicious cake. Do not forget to check outAmy's cake as well!

Preheat oven to 350º F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch round cake pan. Line the bottom with a parchment round and butter the parchment. (If you're using a pan with a removable bottom like a springform, make sure to wrap the pan with 2 or 3 layers of foil.)Place chopped chocolate in a large bowl.In a saucepan over medium-high heat, stir butter, sugar and coffee until the butter is melted and mixture is boiling. Pour the hot mixture over your chopped chocolate. Let stand for 1 minute then gently stir until chocolate is melted and the mixture is smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs vigorously until blended. Whisk in the vanilla and salt. Slowly add about 3/4 cup hot chocolate mixture to the eggs, whisking constantly. (Tempering the eggs with a little bit of the hot chocolate mixture will prevent "scrambled eggs" when combining the two mixtures.) Add the egg mixture to the hot chocolate mixture and whisk to combine well.

Strain the batter through a sieve (to catch any cooked egg bits) and then pour batter into prepared pan. Set cake pan in a large roasting pan and fill the pan with enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the center is shiny and set but still a bit jiggly. Transfer cake pan to a cooling rack and cool for 20 minutes.Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Place a cardboard round on top of the pan and invert the cake onto it. Remove pan and carefully remove the parchment paper. Refrigerate the cake for at least 2 hours before glazing with chocolate glaze.

Bittersweet Ganache6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped2/3 cup heavy whipping cream1 tsp vanilla extractPlace chopped chocolate in a medium bowl.In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a boil. Remove pan from heat and add the chopped chocolate. Let stand for 1 minute then gently stir until chocolate is melted and the glaze is smooth. Gently stir in the vanilla. Transfer glaze to a small bowl and cover the surface of the glaze with plastic wrap and let cool for 5 minutes at room temperature before using.

To glaze the cake:Place the chilled cake, still on the cake round, on a wire rack set over a baking sheet. Slowly pour the hot glaze onto the center of the cake. Smooth the glaze over the top and sides, letting the excess drip onto the baking sheet.

Scrape the extra glaze from the baking sheet and put it in a small ziploc bag. Seal the bag and cut a tiny hole in one of the bottom corners. Gently squeeze the bag over the top of the cake to drizzle the glaze in a decorative pattern. Refrigerate the cake at least one hour before serving.